a guy, a girl, & a love of brewing beer

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2 weeks ago we spent a chunk of our Saturday brewing once again. We seem to be on an every other week schedule right now which is working well but soon enough we will have more beer than we know what to do with! We'll worry about that if/when it happens. Back to Saturday the 14th, we decided to brew a pale ale basically a clone of the amazing Three Floyds Alpha King although we used different hops because we had them on hand. Their characteristics are similar though. The brew day went smoothly which is always a bonus. Ryan has worked extensively on our set up to get it to this place and his efforts have paid off.

When it came time for fermentation we decided to pitch 2 different yeats to taste the difference they will each bring to the beer. We used wet yeast for both - an American ale yeast and a pacific ale yeast.

The beers began fermenting upstairs and were moved downstairs where the Pacific yeast ended up stalling out. Luckily Ryan was able to warm it up again by bringing it back upstairs and it began fermenting again and finished on its own. Today he is transferring them to secondary fermentation. When I was leaving for work i saw him taking a sample for a gravity reading & a tasting. When we tasted them last weekend they both tasted great for where they were at.

Lastly here is a not so great photo of the saison we brewed a month ago when I took the finally gravity reading. This beer turned out great! I am really proud of it especially since I was the lead brewer. 5 gallons are currently on tap right now and we are enjoying it.  

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We spent the last day of March brewing in our backyard/garage. This time, I took the lead which is not usual as Ryan is the brew master out of the two of us. I chose to brew 10 gallons of saison, a favorite type of beer of mine and a great time of year to brew it.

The grain bill consisted mostly of pilsner with some munich malt and a little bit of malted wheat. Recently we ordered a large supply of hops so we chose to use what we had on hand that was comparable alpha acid wise to what the recipe called for. We added sugar to the boil and used 3 different kinds of hops. In the last 5 minutes of boiling we added some spices too - coriander, black pepper, seeds of paradise, and some orange zest. For yeast we used Belgian Ale yeast that Ryan had harvested from the last time he brewed. I woke it up on Friday evening with a yeast starter and it was happy to be alive again. We pitched it after cooling the beer and our saison began fermenting happily less than 5 hours after pitching. Our original gravity reading was 1.058 - right around what I was shooting for.

Brewing wise it was one of the smoothest days we have ever had! Ryan has spent a lot of time optomizing our set up and ironing out the hiccups and his hard work paid off giving us an easy day of brewing. As usual we saved some grain to make dog treats and we used the water form cooling the beer to wash my car! Its nice not to waste it when possible. We tasted our beer after boiling it and as usual, when tasting at this point, it tasted bitter from the hops. It did have a nice intial flavor before the bitterness hit. I am predicting (hoping) for a tasty outcome from this brew day.

In other news, Ryan transferred the Belgian Golden Ale to a a keg and we were able to sample the warm, flat beer. Verdict - damn good in those conditions. Like really damn good. Can't wait to try it when it is ready!

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We have been fairly lucky that in our years of brewing we have never had a batch completely not turn out, never have had a wasted 5 or ten gallons. Sure we have dealt with the over spiced holiday ale but aging is rally helping out with that problem & a glass at a time is still enjoyable. But our "good luck" streak ended last night in a somewhat unexpected way. Ryan kegged 5 gallons of the pale ale I posted the other day - the wet yeast version, the one that was slightly more enjoyable. He had it under pressure & we were eagerly awaiting it to be ready for consumption. A long time ago our regulator on our CO2 tank broke & instead of buying a new one, Ryan has just been guessing at the pressure - not the best approach at all & it finally caught up to us. Apparently the pressure he put on the pale ale was much too high and the beer came out of the top of the keg all day & all night long, depleting all 5 gallons all over our kegerator & basement floor. What a mess it made & what a bummer to lose all that time, effort, & good tasting beer.

Lesson learned, new regulator ordered. Disappointment being felt.

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I had the last glass of our rye ale last night. It was a good brew, not great, but solid. And here is a picture of the finally glass, cloudy as hell from the rye flakes, but still tasty. We are looking forward to giving a rye ale a try again, this time with all the right ingredients!

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About a month ago we brewed 10 gallons of a basic pale ale. Nothing super fancy about it, just a good, not super hopped up pale ale. We pitched different yeast into the two 5 gallon carboys, a dry american ale yeast & a wet american ale yeast. Both beers fermented nicely & once done fermenting were moved into secondary fermentation. We thought about dry hopping one or adding fruit slices but decided to keep it simple, at least for now.

We have had a shortage of kegs at our place, with that not so good Christmas Ale taking up a keg for the long haul. Finally we finished the tasty rye ale & had a keg to spare. Last night we decided to compare & sample the 2 pale ales to decide which should go into the keg. Look at the difference between the two beers! Pretty amazing! Do you have a guess which is the dry yeast & which is the wet?

The dry is on the left & as you can see is much more cloudy. The wet yeast is on the right & is clear & more effervescent. Tasting the beers, both Ryan & I slightly preferred the wet yeast brew. Both are great & we enjoyed them even though they were room temperature and flat. To me that says a lot about this beer!

We are going to keg the wet yeast one tonight & the dry yeast will keep on chilling out in secondary fermentation where we still might dry hop it or add some fruit. I think dry hopping would be the better option but think letting it be basic is nice too. We shall see.

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A close up of one of our brew kettles. In the last few weeks Ryan has spent a significant amount of time tuning up our brewing set up. This has included oing things like taking off the burners, painting them & remounting them at a more optimal height; builing a better working sparge arm; cutting hoses to a length that will make their performance improved; and gridning every piece of metal - the stand, the copper pieces, & the brew kettles. Gone are the burn marks on the stand, gone are the dingy kegs & in their place are the shiny (still unpoished) brew kettles you see in this picture. Looking good! This weekend we'll break in the new & improved brew stand by brewing 10 gallons of a Belgian Golden Ale. Can't wait!

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I have been shockingly horrible at keeping up with this blog. I plan to change that. But for now I will just give a quick update on what's happening on the home brew front.

So far in the last 6 weeks we have brewed on 2 separate occasions. First we brewed a rye ale - 10 gallons of it. Our local home brew supply shop did not have enough rye so we had to supplement with rye flakes which has affected the beer. We also added way more hops than we wanted because our scale was off so initially the beer had a very strong hoppy flavor but that has mellowed out in the last couple weeks. It is on draft in our kegarator & we are enjoying it. We even brought it to the our first (well Ryan did, I was out of town on a business trip) home brew club meeting and got favorable feedback as well as helpful critique's an constructive ideas on home to improve.

Joining the local home brewers club has been on our list of to do's for some time & thankfully it finally happened. I am looking forward to the next meeting which will be my first. It will be great to learn & grow from talking to & maybe working with in the future other home brewers.

We also brewed 10 gallons of a pale ale about 10 days ago. It is currently in secondary fermentation. This time around, we went back to the basics & took very detailed notes & paid extra special attention to all the details. Sometimes it is easy not to do this & sometimes you can tell by the quality of the beer you brew. Everything worked out well, we hit our targets & fermentation was active. A taste of the beer when moving it to secondary revealed nice flavor. We have high hopes for this beer!

Lastly we have been working on our brew stand - cleaning & cutting hoses & buffing the metal stand & painting the burners. Next up is to bugg the brew kegs which will be easy & time consuming.

In the future I will be better about updating this here blog & taking pictures!

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a holiday spiced ale is in the works! a couple of weeks ago we brewed this big beer on a cool, sunny fall day. 30 lbs of grain for 10 gallons of beer is about as big as we can go with our brewing set up. when it came time to ferment the beer we used 2 different yeasts - a Belgian Ale yeast and an English ale yeast that we actually reused from our last brew cycle. The timing worked out perfectly so that on the day we brewed the holiday spiced ale, we also transferred the hopped up English Scottish ale from primary fermentation to secondary fermentation. this was the first time we reused yeast in this way, just leaving the cake at the bottom of our glass carboy and adding the freshly cooled holiday spice ale. both carboys began fermenting within 12 hours, even in our semi-cold house. and boy where they active! we transferred them to secondary fermentation about a week ago, tasting both beers while we transferred. it is interesting how very different they taste & look. looking forward to being able to taste them again! our plan is to bottle some of it in 22oz bottles & give a few bottles as gifts for Christmas to some of our beer loving family & friends.

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3 weeks ago, on a saturday, we brewed using the recipe above created by Ryan. a hopped up enlish scottish ale if you will. we brewed 10 gallons which is the most we can brew at a time with our current set up. it was a perfect brew day, everything worked as it should & everything went according to plan which is not often the case. our gravity was where we wanted it.

the beer in primary fermentation. it has since been moved to secondary with one 5 gallon batch now in a keg, chilling. it will soon be pressurized & then will be good to drink. the few tastes I have had so far have been enjoyable! looking forward to having this on tap & sharing with friends.

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this is our dog Jasper & man oh man does he love treats! something cool about brewing beer is that we can use the spent grain after mashing to make dog treats for him. it also reduces the amount of grain going into our compost pile, getting more use out of it. we found a recipe in Brew Your Own magazine that we have been using.

4 cups spent grain

2 cups flour

1 cup peanut butter

2 eggs

you mix all the ingredients together in a big bowl, we use our hands to really mix it up. next get some cookie sheets and cover them in parchment paper. then put the mixture on the parchment lined cookie sheet, either rolling it out or pressing it down with your hands, covering the sheet. next you will want to cut your mixture, sometimes we get cute and use cookie cutters and make fun shapes but mostly we just cut it into squares.

bake them at 350 for about 45 minutes. then turn down teh temperature to 250 and continue to bake the biscuits for about 2 more hours to really dry them out. after remove them from the oven and let them cool off before breaking them. store in a airtight container and give to your dog whenever! Jasper goes crazy for these treats and can't seem to get enough of them. I have tried them too but they are pretty bland since through brewing we have already extracted all the sugars from the grain.

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a good read

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fermenting news

some fall beer brewing has been taking place in the small spans of time that we share these days. a few weeks ago on a sunny saturday afternoon we set out to brew an India Brown Ale, 5 gallon batch, 13 lb grain bill, 4 kinds of hops. it was a perfect brew day - everything went smoothly, the pumps worked great, no hiccups at all. gotta love those days! we pitched dry ale yeast & set the carboy in the basement to ferment, bringing it upstairs a few hours later after realizing it has already gotten a bit too cold down there. the beer began fermenting happily! we transfer it to a fresh carboy for secondary fermentation & dry hopped it then. also took a little sample for the gravity reading & tasting - so far tasty! and just this past saturday we added another half ounce of hops (warrior) for a little more dry hopping & again sampled our beer. still tasty! can't wait for it to be ready to consume!

we also recently brewed a 10 gallon batch of beer, rather Ryan brewed it while I was traipsingaround toronto. from what I heard, the brewing day did not go as smoothly with some boil overs & false bottom issues. still a so far lovely tasting beer was made. Ryan, using his own recipe, made an Imperial Pumpkin Ale. fermentation went well, again using a dry ale yeast as opposed to a liquid ale yeast. right now the beer is still sitting in fermentation in two glass carboys but we sampled it this weekend. now I have to say that while I like a pumpkin beer, I am picky in general about any kind of fruity/squashy beer - if the flavor is too strong or too sweet it is not good for me. Our pumpkin ale was neither too sweet or overpowering, yet you knew it was a pumpkin beer. very tasty so far & I can't wait to see how this beer progresses.

next we plan on brewing another batch of our Belgian Tripple. we still have some on tap & it is our favorite beer & the thought of not having it any longer is more than either of us can bear so we will brew it again, hopefully the last weekend of the month. on tap right now at our house in addition to the Tripple, we have a Red Ale & an Amber Ale.

so there you have it - what is new on the brewing front!

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a delicious beer

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brewing